


cards on the table (no one's here to sleep)

by raffinit



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dubious Consent, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-06-20 10:11:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15531987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raffinit/pseuds/raffinit
Summary: Sequel to Ultraviolence.The broken moments between Joel and Tess wanting and needing each other.





	1. fragments

She's got the awful habit of chewing her nails. 

 

It's not any of his business what she does or why she does it, but he can't shake away the feeling of worry whenever her fingers splay over his chest and he sees the nails bitten down to the meat and the blood dried on the edges. 

 

"Bad habit, that," he chances one night; shrugging off his shirt and laying it carefully over the back of the one chair in her apartment. 

 

Tess takes another drag of her cigarette, arching one thin brow at him. “You’ve never complained before.”

 

“Didn’t mean the smokes,” he mumbles, scratching at the tuft of hair on his chest somewhat shyly. “You bite your nails. Ain’t good for ya.”

 

She makes something like a laugh in her throat, the low, husky sound that he'll dream about in the loneliest nights. Milky threads of smoke come from her lips; real threads of the pull she has on him. She puts out her cigarette in the blackened bowl.

 

"Not the worst one I've got," she says, reaching for his belt buckle. "Won't be the last one, either."

 

She takes him into her mouth, and Joel forgets to ask about her hands for a little while longer.

 

\-------

 

One night, she pushes off of him with shaky legs, his come dribbling in thick rivulets from her cunt, fucked open and sore. Her brows are furrowed tight, but she pushes his searching hands aside and stumbles into the bathroom for a piss.

 

Joel rolls over to see the bare lines of her legs just through the open door. She doesn't shut her bathroom door when she has clients; the last thing she needs to do is turn her back on them with her goods out in the open, he knows, but still. 

 

Somehow he likes to think it's because she wants to.

 

The toilet flushes as she staggers back into view, leaning against the doorway wearily. The grimy backlight of the bathroom overhead makes her look like a ghostly apparition, a Lilith in the dark of night that his mother had warned him of when he was younger. The curve of her hip isn't porcelain; the planes of her skin aren't perfect, carved in scars and lines and bruises from where the other men had mauled her body, and Joel looks away in shame. 

 

When he leaves that night, he leaves in his place a stack of cards, and a bottle of whiskey to her name.

 

\-----

 

He gets into a fight once because of her.

 

A real, bare-fisted brawl. It's no secret to those in his circle, where he goes at night with his weekly wages and half his rations. He can't stand the knowing smirks, the greasy sneers that he sees whenever they ask about 'his girl'. "Ain't none o' ya damn business," he growls, and often it ends there with a loud guffaw and a placating smack on the back. 

 

One night, though, it doesn't.

 

It's got to be the moonshine. It's always the moonshine, and it doesn't help that Joel doesn't particularly like Tony from the docks all that much to begin with. So when he starts to run his mouth, it doesn't take much. 

 

"Say, Joel, that fine piece of ass of yours was down by the Wharf last week, didja know?"

 

Joel grunts. "Ain’t my business to know." He gives Tony a withering glare from the corner of his eye, takes another hit of moonshine that goes down like turpentine in his throat. 

 

"Gotta be your business, man. Don't ya wanna know who's stickin' their dicks in your bitch?"

 

" _Mind_. Your damn. Business," he warns, teeth grinding down each word. His grip on the bottle tightens despite himself, and Tony's eyes flicker from his hand to his face with a seedy little grin. 

 

"Don't ya wanna know if I paid her a visit?"

 

Joel turns his head to Tony dangerously. The rest of the men around the fire have gone deadly still, watching with anticipation at the way Joel's breaths get deeper, and Tony's grin wider. 

 

"Fine, fine piece of ass, that one, Joel. I see why you pay so much to fuck 'er. Got the tits of a goddess she does, I just wanna stick my dick between 'em and -"

 

He's holding a broken bottle in his hand before he realizes, and Tony's on the ground howling in a ball. There's blood running warm and slick down his arm, pooling around Tony's head, but he doesn't stop there. It's like a dream, a haze of breaking bones and splitting skin when he breaks Tony's nose and dislocates his jaw.

 

It takes four grown men to haul him back. Four of them, and then another to pin him down. 

 

There's a sharp, vile taste on his tongue; acid and moonshine, and a murky red haze over his eyes. He imagines Tess knelt down in front of Tony, sees the twisted look of pain on her face when he fists her hair in one hand and pushes his bare cock between her breasts. He blinks, and sees her kneeling in front of  _ him _ , mouth curved into that feline smirk and holding her breasts pressed together for him, liquid desire in her eyes as she leans forward and presses a kiss to the head of his straining cock. 

 

He tears himself free, doesn't care at all that he's got glass in his hand, or the fact that Tony isn't moving. 

 

He heads North, to the sagging, creaking brownstone he knows too well.

 

\-----

 

Her nails are clawing deep into his back; marks he'll feel when the sweat burns them into memory.

 

Her breaths come out in sharp, short pants into his ear; sounds he'll remember when the quiet becomes too much.

 

Her body writhes under him, pressed hard into the bed; a feeling he'll remember whenever he's not there, not in her bed, between her legs.

 

It's bits and pieces, he tells himself - things he can't help but know. Pieces of her, just the physical, always just the physical. He remembers her just in the physical way she presses her body into his and begs with her skin, the way her lips press into the pulse of his neck and he feels as if he’s bleeding his soul onto her tongue. The way she pulls back long enough to look at him in the dark, eyes hazy and glittering, and yet somehow - so clear. 

 

Her teeth catch on his ear, a sharp hiss with a thrust too deep, and he remembers her in fragments of pain.

 

His hands will bruise her hips by the end of the night, his teeth will mark her anew over the ugly old bruises of greedier mouths. His throat will catch with her name over the sound of her moans, and he will finish inside her with enough strength to leave her shaking from the strain of it. 

 

He will leave by the end of the night. 

 

He will leave a part of him there with her between the sheets. 

 

\-----

 

He likes the taste of her before, and after, and even during. 

 

It's like a drug to him. A hit of something sharp and citrus and bittersweet on his tongue while he's crowding into her space and grinding her down into the thin mattress. He likes the way he moves her, even against her will -- especially then. The way her thighs shake and clamp down against his ears and then jerk back, as if she isn't sure if she wants less or needs more. Likes the way her body arches off the bed and the sounds come from her lips between breathless curses and whispers of his name. 

 

He likes the taste of her off his fingers when he's spreading her open around his cock. Slicked in her wetness and rubbing over her clit until she's squirming away; he always pulls back and pulls out, and she always turns around to watch him take his fingers into his mouth. 

 

He even likes the taste of her after he's pushed his load inside her as deep as it can go, likes the way the sharp bitterness of his seed tastes with her wetness, sweet and tangy in his mouth. Likes to taste them together and know, somehow, inside, that they went well together.

 

He likes the taste of her at different times of the month; bittersweet sometimes, heady and sweet, and citrus with a copper tang other times.  He likes the look in her eyes when he asks for it - he asks, always, always asks, never takes -, that quiet, curious little smile at the edges of her lips as if she's amused by him, by his need to have her. 

 

He likes the look on her face after, when she's twitching and stretched out on the bed with a purr in her throat. The high flush on her cheekbones and the thoughtful, indulgent look in her eyes when she rolls over and grabs the whiskey. 

 

He likes that she lets him touch her.


	2. trust and betrayal

He really doesn't know what made him come here. He doesn't know why he had bypassed someone with actual reason to help him, to give a damn about him, to come all the way here. It was a really bad fucking idea, but everything he's done up till now has been a bad fucking idea, so he figures why not. 

 

But here he is, all over again.

 

Bleeding a hell lot more than the first time, steadily losing control of his balance, blinking away the double vision creeping into the corner of his eyes. 

 

His breath is coming out in wheezing sputters, and he wonders idly if he punctured a lung, maybe. 

 

With one arm clutching around his torso, he reaches out the least bloody hand and raps politely on the door. He sways back on his heels when the door opens, and he musters the strength to look ashamed.

 

"Don't mean to bother," he mumbles, and a river of blood pools at his feet from between his fingers. "I just —"

 

She slams the door in his face, and Joel blinks for a moment before sagging against the wood with a sigh. 

 

He should've known better. He really should've. She's got no reason to give a fuck about him; he's lost all his cards, lost all his ammo. There's nothing on him of value to ply her with for a moment of her time, why did he —

 

The door yanks open again, and Joel feels a surprisingly strong hand curl into his collar. 

 

She hauls him into the apartment, barely catching him before he goes face first into her floor. Tess lowers him down onto the hardwood with a sharp hiss. 

 

"What the hell happened to you?" she asks. She shoves him back with no kindness, props him up against the wall, and Joel blinks up hazy eyes at her to see her in a shirt much too big on her.

 

He stares at the double of her. "'s that my shirt?"

 

"Is that a bone I see sticking out of your chest?"

 

He flinches, peeling his hand off his blood-soaked shirt gingerly. He looks down, and thankfully no, it isn't a bone. "Got jumped," he rasps, sucking in a wheezing breath. "Lost my shit. Don't have nothin' to trade —"

 

"Lean back, old man." Her touches are gentler than before, her voice warmer somehow, and Joel sags back against the wall because he has no choice. "Jesus, look at you."

 

He wishes he could; he wishes he could see the sorry state he's in, if only just to know that he should've stopped somewhere to clean up, to get most of the blood and the grime cleaned up before he came here. He wishes he hadn't thought to trouble her with this. 

 

But she’s dabbing away with a damp rag, brows pinched together as she leans in to inspect the worst of his wounds. He’s got  _ something  _ broken, that much he knows, and when she reaches to touch his cheek, he jerks back at the sting of it. He apologizes immediately, mumbling and blushing and wincing with each breath. 

 

She arches a brow at him, but says nothing back as she reaches for a pill bottle on the kitchen counter and presses it into his hand. “Painkillers,” she murmurs, when his own eyebrows lift into his hairline. “Fresh batch; they’ll kick hard if you take ‘em with something.”

 

He grips the bottle in hand tight. Fresh pills are impossible to come by, not by anyone outside the military; not by anyone seemingly living off rations and trade. He wants to ask her what she’d done to get her hands on these, wonders jealously for a moment if she’s been tending to soldiers and mercenaries and anyone with more power and cards than him. 

 

He says nothing.

 

Instead he just pops the lid and puts two down his throat dry. Slumping back into the wall, he watches her move around the apartment; follows the pale length of her legs and the curve of her ass under his shirt —  _ his  _ shirt, when did he leave that here? — as she bends down to reach for things under the sink and in the overhead cupboards. 

 

When he opens his eyes next, she’s hovering over him again, pressing something cold against his lips. “Drink,” she says, tilting the glass up to his cracked lips. “You’ll need it.”

 

He gulps it down, lets the burn linger on his tongue and in his throat, his eyes never leaving her face as she starts stitching him up. The pain doesn’t even register half the time; he sees her, feels the brush of her skin against his, the sway of her breasts underneath a collar cut down too low to be decent, the dark pink of her nipples hard from the cold. He doesn’t have the strength or the blood to get hard, but his belly is warm.

 

Joel reaches one shaking hand to her thigh, tracing a circle over her skin. “Don’t mean to bother,” he mumbles again, and all at once he feels the kick of the drugs. He certainly hasn’t felt it like this in years. 

 

“Just...didn’t know where else to go.” The room’s starting to spin, Tess’s face weaving in and out of focus, and he reaches up weakly, to touch, to ground himself here. The coarse pads of his fingers stroke her cheek, and he feels her hand take his.

 

“Close your eyes, old man,” she hums, and he swears he feels the whisper of her lips on his palm. “You’ll be okay.”

 

He closes his eyes and dreams of her in sunlight and summer breezes.

 

\------

 

Sometimes they break from routine. 

 

There’s never a guarantee of when he can get back to her —  _ if  _ he gets back to her. There’s no telling if and when military come barging through, kicking down their door and firing guns before questions are asked. Running in the underground circles holds risks that Joel hadn’t previously cared enough about to consider. They’re good at what they do, him and Tommy. They get shit done without questions asked.

 

Still, sometimes he wonders if Tess thinks about where he is when he doesn’t show up for his usual hour with her.

 

One day, he gets back from a drop Outside earlier than expected. Bill had shown up on time for once, and the trade goes off a lot easier than he’d expected — too easy, if experience and instinct are anything to go by. But he makes it back in one piece, gets a payoff hefty enough for them to live comfortably for a while. Tommy takes his share and disappears into one of the hole-in-the-wall watering holes down by the Wharf almost immediately.

 

He makes his way to Tess’s.

 

It’s a path he can walk with his eyes closed; picking along the broken pavement and crumbling buildings, cutting through tunnels and alleyways until he sees the familiar courtyard and brownstone. The sunlight spills through the courtyard in oranges and purples, almost blood-red to his old eyes, and the tinny drone from the automated voice reminds him of curfew. Joel presses his lips together and ducks into an alleyway before a patrol goes trundling by.

 

The fire escape is his usual path in and out on days like this; too early for the underground and too late for the front door. Sometimes she’s sitting out on the balcony waiting for him, cigarette in hand and the taste of liquor on her lips.

 

She’s not on the balcony today.

 

He climbs up the rusted stairwell, smells the jagged scent of copper that feels like an omen as he reaches her third-floor apartment. The window is cracked open a sliver, just enough to let the evening breeze roll in, and just enough to let the sounds from within the apartment bleed out.

 

“ _ Not so hard — _ ”

 

“ _ Shut your trap, dumb bitch. I didn’t pay ya to hear ya whine. _ ”

 

He freezes, muscles coiling tight as his hands tighten on the railing. The fight burns through him, instinct to fight, a growing weight of dread building in his belly as he dares to lift his head and peer through the crack in the window.

 

And then he wishes he hadn’t.

 

She’s shoved face down onto the bed, back arched with a meaty hand fisted tight on the back of her neck. There’s the sound of skin slapping against skin, the musky smell of sex and the breathless, tight gasps from a wheezing throat. The man fucking her bends her to his will mercilessly, tugging at her hair to force her neck up in a violent arch, all while pinning her shoulders down as he bends over her figure and ruts between her thighs. His blood boils with a frightening surge of rage he’s never felt before, and at the same time — a betrayal, almost.

 

She hadn’t even waited for him.

 

Hadn’t given him a second thought.

 

The thought is only a flicker in his mind, all of his thoughts consumed with the way the man spanks her thigh and grabs fistfuls of her ass. She gasps again, high and keening, and he can hear the note of pain in it. 

 

She turns her head towards the window, and Joel feels like he could swallow his tongue.

 

Her fingers dig into the sheets, knuckles white and clenching so deep he worries she might cut through into her palms.  She squirms and winces, face pinched tight into a grimace he’s never seen before, and never wants to see again. All of her body seems to want to curl in on itself, recoiling from the man brutalising her; a complete contrast in the way she grinds her hips back and arches into Joel’s touches. She flinches hard when the man slaps her ass again, already reddened and likely bruising. Joel’s grip on the railing nearly breaks it in half.

 

For whatever reason, she opens her eyes.

 

Their eyes meet, and it’s an instant of things Joel has never felt before.

 

It’s like an underwater dream; her eyes widen and she opens her mouth as if to speak, to call out to him. Her lips move  wordlessly, as if she can’t quite make herself say the words, or maybe he can’t bring himself to hear them.

 

He shoves himself off the landing of her balcony and drops down to the one beneath, jarring his knee in the process. He doesn’t wait to see what happens next, only tumbles down the fire escape the way he came. It’s curfew now, and there’s no way he’ll get back to his apartment in time, but it doesn’t matter.

 

The wind carries something like his name, but he doesn’t stop to hear it.


	3. mirror image

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Are you really so very much different from the other men?"

He manages to keep away for longer than he’d thought possible. It’s not a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but for someone he’s been seeing every other day at every chance he gets, staying away from her block and her street for a week is an impressive feat. During his time away from her, he realises that he never really had reason to be around the neighbourhood before, but now he’s finding reasons to stop by the slums, trading for things he doesn’t need, striking up conversation with men he hadn’t ever thought to look at twice. 

In the absence of routine, he finds new habits to pick up.

He acquires a taste for homebrew like he hasn’t had before. It’s in small increments; he takes to following Tommy to the Wharf for his afterwork drinks, meets the acquaintances of the shady men his brother fills his time with. Fireflies, they call themselves. A rogue militia group on the road to anarchy. Tommy sees an appeal to them that sits uneasily in Joel’s stomach, but he doesn’t push.

It isn’t hard to find a distraction when he tries. Janie is always willing to give him the time of day, as ever. She gets on her knees easily enough for him, practically eager for his cock in her mouth. He hasn’t fucked her yet, but he’s had his fingers inside her, and for the most part it’s enough for the both of them. 

Most times, he closes his eyes and pretends. 

Janie sucks him off differently. She uses her tongue and lips and hands differently; strokes him with an entirely foreign grip and pace. The feel of her hair in his hand is different, not as silky soft, doesn’t smell like something sweet and citrus with the faint bitter of cigarette smoke. 

He tries not to think about it too hard. When he drinks enough, they’re one and the same.

By the end of the week, though, he can’t help himself.

He shows up at her door at his usual time. Knocks on her door with his usual signature knock and rocks back on his heels to wait. He steels himself to see her again, furrows his brow and practices the scowl and glare that comes naturally from remembering how he’d seen her last. Fists curled tight at his sides, he glares at the door expectantly.

He hears the hesitant slide and scrape of the deadbolt, the creak of aged wood and rusting hinges being pulled open. 

Her face emerges, and it’s like the first breeze of spring in his lungs.

She arches a brow at him, smirking in that knowing, crooked way of hers. For all her easy confidence, her eyes are wary and considering. The dark lines under her eyes and the gauntness of her face tells him she hasn’t been eating again, and it takes everything inside him to squash the growing worry in his gut.

She’s not his to worry about, anyway.

She gives him a onceover. “Haven’t seen you around in a while.”

“Been busy,” he grunts, fighting off the urge to curl his lip at her. “Didn’t wanna cut into your time with your other clients.”

Tess blinks, face smoothing over impassively. “You looking for my time, then?” Her eyes narrow slightly at him, her words bitter and quiet. “I’ve got a clear schedule. Don’t have any  _ clients  _ coming around at this hour.”

Gritting his teeth, he shrugs his broad shoulders almost aggressively. “If you ain’t got nothin’ better to do.” His eyes almost dare her to deny him;  _ show me exactly how little I mean to you. Show me I was right about you _ .

They look at each other for a long while, heavy tension building between them as Tess regards him coldly from her doorway. She could very well turn him away; it’s her right to do so. He’s nothing more than a  _ client _ , after all. Someone who pays to fuck her, just like all the other guys.

Instead, she pulls the door open wider, steps back into the apartment. There’s a bitter, mocking smile on her face as she steps aside, turns her back to him. “Cards on the table.”

He tosses a stack onto the kitchen counter, wrapped in rubber band, shrugging off his jacket and tugging his shirt over his head brusquely. She’s sitting at the end of the bed, legs crossed long and pale and bare like he remembers. 

“How do you want me?” she asks, peering at him expectantly when his hand drops down to his belt buckle.

_ Does it matter _ ? He wonders bitterly.  _ I want you in the only way you won’t let me have you _ . “How’d the last one have ya?”

She looks surprised, almost uncomfortable as she shifts on the bed. “Which one?” she drawls eventually, leaning back on her palms. From this position, he can see the outline of her nipples through the thin fabric of her tank top, notes the smattering of marks across her freckled skin. Bruises from hands and mouths pawing at her, sucking hickeys into her neck and grabbing at her throat as if to choke her.

Some bruises are still purple and blue, the freshest on her skin.

“Didn’t know you did doubles,” he says, nearly spitting it as he unbuckles his belt. The tic in his jaw is obvious, he knows. It’s an awful tell that he can’t help when he’s around her. “Reckon you get quite the payload from that.”

She sighs impatiently, reaching down to tug her shorts off with a yank. “You didn’t come here to talk,” she reminds him sharply. “Just tell me if you want me on my knees or not.” Her tank top stays on, as it always does.

“Ain’t that how they like ya,” he growls, anger sparking when Tess rolls her eyes. She turns over easily, spreading her knees on the sheets and looking at him over her shoulder.

She dares to wiggle her ass at him, goading and impatient. “Well?”

With a sour ache building in his belly and the taste of bile in his throat, he climbs onto the bed. He pushes her down into the mattress — face down, ass up, like he likes — but his big, warm hand is gentle on her shoulder blade. His fingers spread across her skin to span over the constellation of pale freckles along her back and shoulders, tracing the arch of her spine. He grips her hips, thumbs dipping hard into the dimples of her ass.

For how much he wishes he could hate her, he’s not heartless. He swipes the blunt head of his cock over her folds, testing her wetness even as she’s grinding her hips back impatiently. She’s not as wet as she usually is, but still wetter than he’d expected. A flickering thought crosses his mind — another man’s come dripping out of her, smeared over her thighs.

He sinks his nails into her skin and shoves in.

The pace is brutal and unforgiving; he drags himself out and pushes back in, uncaring of the way she gasps and her back bows. 

Her nails sink into the sheets, knees spreading wider to accommodate the girth of him, but Joel grunts. He shoves her legs back together, and Tess lets out a strangled little warble into the pillows. She fights him for the next few thrusts, but eventually she melts down onto the pillows, smothering something suspiciously whimper-like. 

“What?” he pants, gliding out in one slow move, thrusting in so slowly he can feel her walls catching over each inch of his cock. “Those other fellas don’t fuck you like this? Don’t put you face down, ass up anymore?”

She turns her face in the pillows, glaring at him sidelong before her eyes slam shut and her brows furrow on a particularly vicious heft. “What makes you think I don’t make the same noises for them?” she retorts, muffled and breathless into the pillow. “All you boys like hearing how big your dicks are. You love a good show.”

That stings. It stings a lot more than he expected it to, and for that, he makes sure the next thrust hurts. She squeaks, real pain flashing through her eyes as she scrambles up the bed, tugging her hips away from his hold. He slips halfway out before he yanks her back, baring his teeth at her bowed back as he bullies his way back inside her, holding in place when he’s fully hilted inside her. He can feel her walls spasming wildly around him, desperately trying to adjust even as she’s slick and wet and hot around him.

He glances off to the side, freezing when he catches the reflection of himself in the exact window he’d seen them through all those days ago. This time it’s him in place of that man, that nameless asshole fucking her without a care. All of it is the same — the curve of her back, the steely grip of his hands on her hips, the pinched furrow in her brow as she clutches the pillows.

He pulls out completely, abrupt and fast. Tess keens at the rough drag of his cock against her walls, collapsing onto her side and turning to look at him apprehensively. He rocks back onto his thighs, staring down at her in abject horror.

“I —” he swallows hard, tastes the bile rising in his throat. “I didn’t —”

She looks at him wearily, something almost fond in the curve of her lips. “It’s easy to get jealous,” she murmurs, reaching down to cup her hand over her folds almost gingerly. She must be sore. “People like to think they  _ own  _ me. You’re not the first, and you probably won’t be the last.”

It crumbles in his chest, the reality of the fact that he probably isn’t the first man to do this. She’s not anything to own — she’s her own person, no matter how much time she makes for them, how many cards it takes for her to do things like get on her knees or swallow or let them bruise her like this. The only difference between him and the other men is that he doesn’t  _ want  _ to own her.

He just doesn’t want to share her with anyone else.

“I don’t — I don’t wanna  _ own  _ you,” he croaks, and the shame feels like blazing steel cutting into his chest, cracking it open through the bone. “I just —” His hands tremble, so he curls them tight into fists. His eyes burn for whatever reason, and he looks down hard at the bed, peers up at her through his lashes. 

When Tess next speaks, she sounds almost gentle. Apologetic and chiding like a mother speaking to an unreasonable child. “I’m not someone you need to save, Joel.” 

His breath hitches. He can count on one hand the number of times she’s called him by name.

“I know I’m fucked up.” She shrugs, gives him a disparaging little smile, sadness along the edges of her eyes. “I chose this life. I don’t need a white knight. Hell — don’t really think any white knight out there’s gonna wanna rescue this hot mess.”

“Can’t say I’m any kinda white knight,” he whispers. “I just...I just think you don’t see yourself the way I see you.”

She blinks. “And how exactly do you see me?” she asks, a soft layer of amusement in her voice.

He shrugs, puts his hands in his lap because there’s nothing else he can do with them. His dick is soft and slick between his legs, and the weight of it reminds him of all the other times he’d been over, of all the times he’s had her. What was real, then? How much of the things he’s done with her were things she’d genuinely wanted? Genuinely enjoyed? Did she make those sounds for all the other men, too? Does she sigh like that in everyone else’s ear when she’s laid on her back and touched like he does with her? Does she dance her fingertips over their backs and shoulders like she does with him?

Does she sit up at night, cigarette in hand and liquor in a glass beside her, laughing at the way he looks at her? Does she share a cigarette with Malick, or Terrance, or Johnny; do they laugh about the sad son of a bitch that looks at her with puppy eyes and touches her like something fragile?

“I just think you deserve better,” he mumbles. “Better than this. Better than those sons of bitches.” He looks away, curls his hands into fists on his thighs. “Better than me.”

She sighs, and the sheets crumple and shift as she rises up on her thighs. Her hand is cold when she lays it on his chest, cool and damp and smelling faintly of cigarettes. The temptation to kiss her fingertips is nearly overwhelming. Instead he looks at her, and Tess slides her hand down over his arm, wraps her elegant fingers around his wrist.

Her hand squeezes around his wrist, and then her lips press to his. He freezes, too stunned to do anything else but let his eyes flutter shut. She kisses like he remembers; her lips soft and dry, a shy pressure against his own mouth. His lips part, and she takes it as an invitation to venture further. Her tongue swipes across his lower lip, teeth tugging gently, and Joel comes back to himself.

He takes her into his arms, crushes her close as he tilts his head down to plunder her mouth. She lets out a breathless little moan, reaches up blindly to wrap her arms around his shoulders, to scrape her nails against the back of his neck and tangle them into his hair.

“Tess,” he says.

“Old man.” She cards her fingers through his hair fondly. 

This time, she welcomes him between her legs. Strokes the steadily hardening length of him with one expert hand before guiding him down to where she wants him. He surrenders into her, muffling his groans into her hair as she sighs and keens into his ear. She murmurs warm words of encouragement,  _ yes, like that, there, harder. Please.  _

He presses his lips desperately against the delicate arch of her neck, mumbling like broken prayer into her skin.

_ I’m sorry. I’m sorry. _

He wishes he had the strength to say it. Wishes he didn’t have reason to say it.

Wishes he could be something better than this.

What good are his  _ sorries _ to her anymore? How many other men have said the same; have stroked her cheek after bruising it and whispering the same two fucking words —

He buries his face into her hair, breathes in the scent of her in ragged, shuddering mouthfuls. Slips his hand between them and touches her the way he knows she likes; pushes her frantically to that precipice. She pants and writhes, flailing out one hand to clutch the sheets, and Joel opens his eyes through the haze of it all when she gasps his name.

He commits the sight of her to memory. Just like this; flushed and pale and lovely in moonlight.

Just his; only if for a night.


	4. violence and nature

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What goes around...

He loses himself in her in more ways than one.

 

It happens after that one night with Tony; after he’d started bringing her wildflowers in bottle-vases, leaving her notes. He’s gone one night - working overhaul at the garage and on the Outside. The first person he thinks to tell is her -  _ don’t wait up for me; I’ll see you in the morning. _

 

He tries to justify that Tommy already knows. He should already know, because they work together. Tess is the only other person who gives a damn about where he’s been, where’s he going to be. Right?

 

But Joel gets through his shift with a strange, niggling sensation in his belly. An unsettling roil; an uncomfortable damp heat that clings to the back of his neck that he can’t rub away. 

 

He doesn’t understand why.

 

Until he gets to her apartment. 

 

The door’s been kicked open. He knows it from the way the hinges hang off the doorway. 

 

He’s on high alert at once - in overdrive.

 

_ Was it military? Was it a client coming back to get his money’s worth? _

 

He should’ve been here. He should’ve been here to stop it from happening.

 

He finds her in the bedroom. Bound to the headboard with ropes cutting into her wrists and barely conscious. The marks on her skin makes him want to vomit; blood runs in streaks down her thighs, mottled in bruises and scratches and places where their hands had wrapped around her so tight they leave the shadow of fingerprints against her skin.

 

The rope in her mouth is frayed from the frantic chewing and grinding of her teeth, and he cuts that one first. Her lip is split and caked in dried blood, there’s the gritty print of a  _ boot  _ against her neck, but she opens her glazed eyes and looks at him. 

 

“‘s okay,” he croaks, sawing frantically at the ropes on her wrists. “‘s just me, I got ya -”

 

He finds out later that it was Tony and his goons. She doesn’t tell him what they did - won’t tell him, not even when he’s trying to stitch up the tear between her legs from whatever they did to her. He doesn’t even find out from her - he finds a note, tucked into the bandana of her hair. It’s nearly sealed shut all the way from the blood crusted around her temple; where they’d struck her across the head.

 

He peels the paper open with fingers trembling with an unholy kind of rage.

 

_ Too bad your pretty little bitch couldn’t take more. Now we’re even. _

 

He shreds the note to pieces, trembling so hard he nearly can’t see right. They’ve taken everything they can get their hands on - liquor, rations, everything and anything they can trade. She recoils when he reaches for her again, and Joel feels a vicious, jagged split in his chest opening. He can see the ridges of her ribs under the tattered mess of her shirt, the hollow space between each row.

 

_ Too thin _ , he thinks.  _ Too damn thin _ .

 

He cleans her up as well as he can; stitches what needs to be stitched, plies her with all the liquor and pills he has with him. She hasn’t said a thing to him since, lost behind a shuttered, faraway look in her eyes, and Joel tries not to think about the way she twitches at his touches when he dabs alcohol to the cut on her cheek. 

 

He doesn’t say anything to her - can’t say anything, what could he possibly say to her about this? Instead he puts her door back together, reinforces it with deadbolts that he tears out of other broken doors. 

 

When the pills and liquor finally kick in, he leaves her wrapped in his jacket, curled on the bed whose sheets he’d shredded to pieces to keep her from sleeping in the stains. 

 

He goes down into the shops and breaks enough fingers to find out where Tony’s hiding, and kills his way to the man. 

 

With Tony, he takes his time. 

 

Breaks each finger in at least three places; peels off each fingernail for the nail ripped out of Tess’s finger from fighting them so hard. Snaps his wrists and ties him down with the same length of rope he had to cut off Tess. “Here’s the thing, Tony,” he says, kicking the sobbing man over onto his back. “I wouldna said nothin’ if you’d have come for me.”

 

He crouches over the man, balling up a wad of rags and prying Tony’s mouth open to shove it inside. “I woulda taken it, called us even,” he continues calmly, nails digging into the man’s cheek as he stares down into Tony’s petrified face with cold precision in his eyes. “But you had to touch her.”

 

He pulls out a knife, cuts Tony’s belt off in an easy flick, starts on his zipper. Tony howls and wails and thrashes, and Joel bares his teeth, snarls as he buries the knife deep into his thigh.

 

Tony gurgles out a sound, and goes rigid. 

 

“You move again, I’ll put it in the other leg,” Joel warns him, and Tony shivers into low, sobbing whimpers. He can smell piss, feel it damp on the denim under his hand, and Joel scowls in disgust as he cuts away at his pants. 

 

He tilts his head at Tony’s cock, small and shriveled and steeping in his own piss, shaking his head with a sigh. He grips the hilt of the knife tight, yanks it out in one quick rush, glaring when Tony yelps. “You brought this on yourself.”

 

The first cut is too shallow, jagged from how blunt he’s run the blade down, and Tony’s hands flex and shake and more piss comes. Joel cuts again, sawing the blade across his skin, and Tony’s eyes are rolling up into his head, the sharp smell of blood and piss mingling together. There’s a gurgling, choking sound from his throat, and Joel sees vomit bubbling up around the rag, spewing from between his lips. 

 

He keeps cutting.

 

He leaves the body where it is, doused in a gallon of gasoline he’d siphoned from a truck at work. A flick of a match he took from Tess, and it goes up in flames like the fire  already blazing behind his eyes. It should scare him - how easily he slips back into his old ways, how easily he’s given himself into the brutality he knows hides under his skin. He hasn’t been a Hunter in years. 

 

The crazy thing about it though is that he doesn’t feel a lick of guilt about it. This isn’t hunting. 

 

This is retribution.

 

When the whispers of Tony’s body come to his ears the next day, he looks around the circle of men and gives them a cold smile. 

 

“Play your hands, boys. Got an appointment I gotta keep.”


End file.
